The Best of the Net 9-28-08

Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths – Do you find your weaknesses difficult to overcome? The way we think about weakness fuels procrastination and fear. It keeps us from acting in our own best interest. In this post, Leo describes how you can turn your weaknesses into strengths by re-framing them. The first time I saw this method used, I was in a funk over not having a college degree, when I met a powerful CEO who didn’t have a degree. I asked him how he did it and he said, “not having a degree is one of my biggest strengths.” He went on to describe why he believed that. I haven’t thought about weaknesses the same since. Most limitations are self-imposed by your own lack of imagination.

Success is More Complex Than Failure – I’ve become a huge Hugh McLeod fan in the last month. This post demonstrates all the qualities I like about his thinking. Hugh cuts through all the popular psycho-bullshit in ways that reach out and slap you in the face. We all hear the mantra – ‘simplify’. If you’re a busy type A, maybe you do need to simplify. But if you struggle to get off your butt, you don’t need simplicity, you need a little complexity in your life. Here is the fact… success is complicated. It is complicated to win. Sure people who are great make it look easy, but it isn’t easy. It never was. Simple, cheap, fast success is a lie. The reason great software is simple isn’t because it was created by keeping things simple. The next time somebody tells you to ‘keep it simple’, tell them, ‘keeping things simple is complicated. Simple things are not created by simpletons, simple things are created by hiding complexity from simpletons.”
The 12 Biggest Personal Finance Mistakes – This is advice that few of us want to take. It requires honesty, vigilance, and self-discipline. But if you follow it, over the long run, you should overcome most financial pitfalls.The Millionaire Quiz – Do you want to understand the millionaire mindset? This post will help.
Shiller on the Bailout – What amazed me about this video is how Shiller has no valis reason to back this bailout. And he admits it! but still wants it! A 700 billion dollar crapshoot? Not even an educated guess, a wild one. Late in the interview he appears to say that he doesn’t like the bailout because he doesn’t understand how it could work, and then immediately says, “But it is better than doing nothing.” If he doesn’t
know what will help, and he doesn’t know what will hurt, he doesn’t know anything. Why doesn’t he just say that? The only people who say anything concrete are the Austrian Economists. At least they can articulate the problem, the solution, and the logic behind it.
The Speech Bush Should Have Given on the Bailout – The Last Psychiatrist is another site I’ve grown to love over the past few months. This post is indicative of the quality of the content. It’s honest and it’s intelligent and it will make you think.
Stephen King – Daily Writing Tips shares a few gems from Stephen King’s On Writing. I see Stephen King as the master of our time. He belongs in the same category as Twain and Hemingway, unfortunately he’ll never gain that level of respect because of his genre.